Jun 4th 2012 08:11 am The specialist
I want to show you something today, only because I think you’ll find it interesting. You might remember the A&J comic strip that ran in newspapers this past Wednesday. It was a wordless cartoon that depicted Gene and Mary Lou walking to a tidal river near the rural house they plan to live in when (if?) they get married soon. If you don’t remember, this is the cartoon. If you do remember, take a look anyway, because we’re going to be talking about the colors in the cartoon.
This cartoon, and all the daily cartoons, are colored by individuals with whom I have no contact. I don’t worry about this too much, because coloring Arlo and Janis sitting on the sofa or around the kitchen table really is not that challenging. However, I threw the unsuspecting colorist a curve on this one—and, as always, at the last minute. This last two panels, particularly the third, are not what I envisioned. In fact, this is a quick-and-dirty version of the way I would have colored it, based on the colorist’s original effort.
As I said, I mention this only because I think you’ll enjoy seeing it. I don’t fret about such hiccups; the world will continue to spin on its axis. However, if I’m going to stretch myself artistically, I think I am going to have to get more involved in the total process. The failing is not the colorist’s. It’s mine.
As for the retro cartoon, something for a Monday morning.
Posted by jimmyjohnson / Vintage A&J
42 Responses to “The specialist”
Burns on 04 Jun 2012 at 8:37 am #
Thanks for sharing your vision on this one Jimmy! I suppose the colorist had never seen nor thought of live oak before (I know as a New-Englander I probably would not have thought of it till I saw your rendition). In fact, I wonder how much is regional. We NE-ers would certainly imagine the area around a river being green. Whereas I’m guessing you are imagining a post-storm area (good symbolism!)
David from La Grange on 04 Jun 2012 at 8:39 am #
Jimmy, I’m getting a 404/not found error from the link.
Don Robertson on 04 Jun 2012 at 8:39 am #
I think colour is the most important component of any visual medium, be it a painting, cartoon or a web page. It can convey subtle and not so subtle meanings and intentions that would take hundreds of words to replace.
Your botched colouring job is certainly proof positive. I hope you are able to regain control of this important aspect of your work.
Galliglo in Ohio on 04 Jun 2012 at 8:40 am #
Jimmy… your comments today demonstrate why I enjoy the strip – and the blog – so much. At the risk of sounding maudlin, you are NICE. No blaming others… no making excuses… just accepting responsibility for a (possible) lack of communication.
We who keep coming back appreciate that honesty in you – and in each other.
OK – I’m gonna hush now…
minnesotadon on 04 Jun 2012 at 8:40 am #
I see differences, but I don’t see any difference. Am I too simplistic of a guy. It did not seem to me to change the message any. I guess that is why I am not an artist. And you are correct…the world will continue to turn.
Mindy on 04 Jun 2012 at 8:47 am #
Jimmy, the big problem I have with out local “colorist” is that he/she seems determined to put Arlo and Janis is the same color clothing for six months at a time! I would suppose the problem is inherent to having a third [or twentieth] party handle the chore….
Bob, near Mark on 04 Jun 2012 at 8:48 am #
When I first saw the strip when it was published, I wondered why there was so much green algae in the river.
Will Overby on 04 Jun 2012 at 8:54 am #
Wow! It looks like a completely different environment! Thanks for sharing!
Whistling Rufus on 04 Jun 2012 at 9:04 am #
The colorist is not familiar with the coastal environment.
Ruth Anne in Winter Park on 04 Jun 2012 at 9:06 am #
Your version suggests salt marsh, putting them within an easy commute to help Gus at the restaurant. The colorist’s version puts them much farther upstream.
Blinky the Wonder Wombat on 04 Jun 2012 at 9:21 am #
I really enjoyed the original strip, but the “director’s cut” is even better!
JJ- Speaking of coloring, when A&J started, no one dreamed of daily strips being in color. Progress being what it is,though, coloring of strips has become de rigeur, even if most newspapers still publish the daily strips in glorious black and white. While for most of your daily strips, color is not important to the subject, but occasionally, like Wednesday’s, it is very important. In strips like this, do you draw them with the color or the black and white version in mind?
Dave in MA on 04 Jun 2012 at 9:23 am #
On a different note, I had to look up “Busman’s Holiday”. The retro strip makes SOOOOOOO much more sense now.
Bryan on 04 Jun 2012 at 9:57 am #
Being from the desert I don’t recognize or relate to either environment. I don’t know what “live oak” is (isn’t all oak alive??) and I wouldn’t recognize a salt marsh or marsh grass if I fell into it. So from my perspective they are both cool but I actually prefer the contractors color. Often, the only green we have is near a river, not that there are very many of those out here, either.
Robin in Fl on 04 Jun 2012 at 10:03 am #
Bryan
Live oak is a particular kind of oak tree that is (mostly) evergreen.
I once lived in a small town in Texas called Live Oak. When I called my bank in FL to change my address there was a long silence, and the customer service rep asked, “they have trees in Texas?”
Tom from the Front Range on 04 Jun 2012 at 10:10 am #
Sorry to bring a downer mood to the conversation, but I just read today of the passing last week of Jim Unger, creator of Herman. I rarely saw a Herman panel that didn’t make me at least chuckle. More often, they made me laugh out loud.
RIP Jim.
Fran[Cisco] on 04 Jun 2012 at 10:49 am #
First, I have to agree with Galliglo in Ohio; your work is a most refreshing corner of my world.
Moving on to the color adventures — The thing that strikes me is that the colorist must be completely unfamiliar with spanish moss (assuming that that is spanish moss hanging from the lower limb in panel 3). In my limited experience, that’s *never* green.
While I agree that comic loses something due to the faulty the environmental depiction, I also have to agree that (1) it still tells its story and (2) “the world will continue to spin on its axis.”
Dave in MA on 04 Jun 2012 at 11:04 am #
Jerry in Fl, you asked for it, somewhere between 5.9 and 6.1:
http://www.foxnews.com/world/2012/06/04/quake-shakes-buildings-in-indonesia-capital
Art on 04 Jun 2012 at 11:18 am #
Just have to comment on today’s (June4) strip… Wow, that is some serious fourth-wall breaking going on, and by Janis no less. At least, to my recollection it is usually Arlo who makes the odd witty aside to the fourth wall.
Boise Ed on 04 Jun 2012 at 11:41 am #
I’m afraid I’m having trouble interpreting panel 3 of http://arloandjanis.com/4280-2 The white part above and right of the couple is a river, but what is the white part below them? (I’m applying “above” and “below” to the drawing, not the landscape.) In any case, JJ, thank you for this insight into the process.
Dave in MA on 04 Jun 2012 at 12:01 pm #
Jerry in FL, and another one. I think you jinxed everyone….
http://www.cnn.com/2012/06/03/world/americas/panama-earthquake/index.html?hpt=hp_bn2
TruckerRon on 04 Jun 2012 at 12:35 pm #
GR6 stated that Mindy and John were from Venus and Mars. Well, Mindy and John may be from those planets, but some of us are from Koozebane, where we have exciting romantic techniques, like the Galley-oh-hoop-hoop!
TruckerRon on 04 Jun 2012 at 12:36 pm #
There! I finally got my comment out without it going into Moderation because I also had two links… here’s the funnier one:
http://bit.ly/JCPWV
LVJeff on 04 Jun 2012 at 1:08 pm #
Jimmy, your colored version changes the mood and romanticism by… well, a ton! So much better.
Galliglo in Ohio on 04 Jun 2012 at 1:59 pm #
Oh my gosh! TruckerRon, that is hilarious! I had never seen that bit.
Mindy on 04 Jun 2012 at 2:18 pm #
TruckerRon, John ain’t from Mars. He’s a Romulan. Or a Klingon.
Galliglo in Ohio on 04 Jun 2012 at 4:10 pm #
Boise Ed – Regarding the 3rd panel: I just assumed that it is a high, sandy bank and that Gene and Mary Lou are walking on a path at the bottom of the bank. Does that fit?
curmudgeonly ex-professor on 04 Jun 2012 at 4:32 pm #
TR – That was a neat link!! It seems that the galley-oh-hoop-hoop has a result similar to that of cell mitosis – but ask eMb for confirmation.
…And here I was, thinking you were making fun of Galliglo (via the name)….
Mark in TTown on 04 Jun 2012 at 4:35 pm #
Tom, thank you for the information about Jim Unger. He was one of my favorite comic strip artists before I had ever seen A&J. I will miss his work very much, but I don’t think he had done much new material for some time. I’m glad his old strips are still being carried online.
Jimmy, obviously the colorist had never heard Alabama’s ads touting “the sugar white beaches of the Alabama Gulf Coast”. Thanks for posting what you really meant. Have you asked Gocomics if you can supply color suggestions/directions? I understand your comment about it not mattering in some strips, but when it changes the meaning you should be able to put them back on track.
Mark in Boston on 04 Jun 2012 at 4:42 pm #
Is it really a Busman’s Holiday if you do what your boss does at work?
Hmmm … I guess it depends on whether you think Arlo is about to “spread it” or “deal with it”.
By the way, have you ever seen a manure spreader in action? It’s a sort of big flatbed trailer pulled long by a tractor, with a kind of conveyor belt and a big horizontal fan in the back, and once you’ve seen it working you know what happens when something hits the fan.
Craig T on 04 Jun 2012 at 4:46 pm #
Fran[Cisco], the Spanish moss is what stood out to me, too. It’s always a slightly bluish gray, never green.
But if you haven’t been to the Southern coast, and, even if you have, if you haven’t looked in the trees and thought about it, how would you know?
I wish the house had been covered with kudzu when they started.
Mindy on 04 Jun 2012 at 4:59 pm #
A politician is born, Mark in Boston?
Galliglo in Ohio on 04 Jun 2012 at 5:29 pm #
curmudgeonly ex-professor: I didn’t even think of that! Does that make me very trusting? Or just naive?
Mark in Boston: I am familiar with a manure spreader… I used to help my dad with that chore when I was a girl. Your comments reminded me of a line in an old Limelighters song… “the wind blew and… certain objects became airbourne…”
Ruth Anne in Winter Park on 04 Jun 2012 at 7:10 pm #
Anyone else familiar with a book called Floridays by Don Blanding? The trees (not the oak) by the river in last week’s strip reminded my husband of Blanding’s style.
James Riendeau on 04 Jun 2012 at 8:51 pm #
“Busman’s holiday” is one of those english idioms that I never did like as it doesn’t make much sense to American English speakers. When I think busman, I don’t think “bus driver”, but a busboy who’s too old to be called a busboy, but can’t find other work.
CW in 617 on 04 Jun 2012 at 9:06 pm #
The discussion about coloring the flora was, and is, interesting to this New Englander (and please, we all know that “Yankee” and “Yankees fan” do not describe identical sets).
While I have never seen a live Live Oak, the USS Constitution has Live Oak planks on its sides (what’s the correct nautical term?), and this wood gave this ship the name “Old Ironsides.” Years ago, when the ship was being repaired, the wood had to be brought from (I think) Georgia.
Before that, the only reference to “Live Oak” that I had heard was from the song “Tom Dooley.”
In my pre-New England days, as a summer camp counselor in the Sierra foothills, part of my job was having to explain the difference between varieties of pine. I can also tell different oaks by their leaves, excepting Live Oak, and possibly others I’ve not seen before.
Craig T on 04 Jun 2012 at 9:14 pm #
The Live Oak is the state tree of Georgia, so that makes sense.
(The state flower is the Cherokee Rose and the state bird is the Brown Thrasher. See, I did learn something in school.)
buzz on 04 Jun 2012 at 9:54 pm #
Nice way you handled the exposition in today’s strip
Ghost Rider 6 on 04 Jun 2012 at 10:19 pm #
Mindy, do you love it when he talks Klingon to you?
Debbie in Alabama on 05 Jun 2012 at 7:45 am #
The poisoned Toomer’s Oaks at Jimmy’s alma mater are live oaks.
redagainPatti on 05 Jun 2012 at 7:47 am #
I knew from the first time around on this, Due to your careful drawing, THE sand was sand.. and did not care for it being made all green. In fact it was almost as if that was the only color they had to work with besides just a bit of blue and dab of yellow and brown. However as I have read your work (in here) for sometime now, I knew when the “colors” came out, you were NOT over the color part of life. I knew who did or had the “hiccup”.
I recall there was a bit of a learning curve and you were shaking your head over some of the rather interesting/dumb coloring actions in the very early days. BUT as all of us in life.. with other “problems” – one moves on and the problem is only a problem if we let it become so.
redagainpatti – climbing down off her soap box and ending the teaching lesson for the day…..
Y’all have a good day or make it one!
Boston Diana on 05 Jun 2012 at 8:39 am #
On today’s (tuesday’s) cartoon, I wonder if it is a function of the coloring or my imagination, but doesn’t Gus look “nicer” these days? He looked so old and grumpy before… I can almost see a smile today.
I have to admit, the Gene/Mary Lou story line draws me in completely. I am probably one of 4 people on the planet under the age of 40 who still have an actual newspaper delivered to my front door every day and it is my ritual to read the comics, saving A&J for last, before work in the a.m. But lately I haven’t had time and I find myself coming to the website to get a sneak peak at the next steps in the story line.
When I was married, I always thought A&J perfectly captured parts of my life. Now, I find the Gene/MaryLou line captivating and hopeful, in all of its complexity.
Burns on 06 Jun 2012 at 9:32 am #
As the one who first mentioned “live oak” in the comments (the first comment) I have to rather sheepishly say that I messed up. I *really* meant the Spanish Moss. See, we New Englanders really DON’T know what live oak is. (And in the first comment I was referring to the bright green of the colorist vs the color that Jimmy used).